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Drive My Car Movie Review

Drive My Car is a 2021 Japanese drama film directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and starring Hidetoshi Nishijima. It’s a well-made, but very boring movie.

An aging, widowed actor seeks a chauffeur. The actor turns to his go-to mechanic, who ends up recommending a 20-year-old girl. Despite their initial misgivings, a very special relationship develops between the two. I did not are for this story myself. I found it boring and I didn’t connect with either of the characters.

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The film being shot and set mostly in a car was interesting and that was well executed, but it also led to this strange stagey feel to the movie that for the most part felt too literary and not cinematic enough in its approach. This story might be great in the book form, but not on the screen unfortunately.

Psychologically complex, Drive My Car deals with a lot of things, especially focusing on trust and hope, but the movie’s languid pace robbed it of any momentum. Couple that with its terribly long runtime of almost three hours and you’ve got one of the most tedious movies that I’ve seen in quite a while.

The acting is terrific as the cast is competent and they delivered moving performances. The characters have well written personalities and arcs while their relationship is also solid. But again, because the movie is so slow and dull, I did not emotionally connect with either of the characters. If they had cut at least an hour of it, it would have been much more palatable to general audiences.

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